On 8/4/05, David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > care about semantics. So I'm not really seeing the market forces
> > you're talking about. This is not a problem that will solve itself on
> > that end.
>
> In any case, web design works in a media type market, where there
> immediate customer is often the advertiser and not the consumer. It also
> operates in a world where technology is sold on surface appearence and
> even on the quality of the adverts as entertainment in their own right,
> rather than on the fundamental quality of the technology.
So crappy movies are blockbusters as long as the ads are good enough?
While that works for awhile, I think the lackluster sales of some of
the better hyped, but bad movies says otherwise. I don't argue that
it's an initial effect, but bad is bad and people pretty much call it
for what it is.
> I suspect, whilst users often complain about difficulty, they often
> have a false sense of difficulty and actually equate the real difficulty
> with a feeling of status in having mastered the technology, whilst
> condemning the simpler interfaces as difficult. Basically, if they
> think that something is high technology, they accept the difficulty,
> when they would reject lesser difficulty in something they believe
> is not state of the art.
Perhaps in the circles we're in, but I'm fairly positive the usability
research that shows that bad interfaces have a high correlation with
high dislike of said interface says otherwise. I find that far too
often the ego here and in computer circles interferes with good
design. And this ego seems to come mostly from the desire to look
impressive when they don't really feel impressive. I could go on and
on about the psychology of design, but I won't. Instead I'll ask the
question again:
Whom do we serve? The web author, the user or ourselves?
--
Orion Adrian